This executive summary provides a snapshot of the larger report, "How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians" (ED591128). The report represents perhaps the largest and most comprehensive research effort exploring how U.S. college-age students are accessing, consuming, and engaging with news…

How will your library serve mobile device users? By building apps from scratch? By offering entirely separate content? Or by modifying your site for mobile devices? This author found that the best fit for a joint library serving Victoria College and the University of Houston-Victoria was to build a mobile website in HTML and CSS using mobile…

The author, a digital access architect in the information systems department of the Orange County Library System in Florida, was given the challenge of creating a library mobile app around the 2009 holiday season. At that time, Sheri Chambers, digital content manager in the information systems department, and Debbie Moss, assistant director of the…

The fact that people now live in a world of abundant portable electronic devices is important to any organization that maintains a web presence, including libraries. No longer tied to a desktop, the patrons' netbooks, tablets, ebook readers, and, of course, cellphones all become potential tools for remote access to library content. About a year…

The rise of apps and mobile devices has opened the door to small, dedicated software programs that are focused on singular tasks. From the author's perspective as head of digital access and web service manager at Montana State University, these apps offered an opportunity to build a focused digital service aimed at allowing someone to enter a…

The face of reading is changing, and it is happening at a much faster rate than most people had imagined. Where is it all going? What factors are driving the most significant developments? And what role do librarians play in this rapidly evolving world? These are some of the key questions that stakeholders--including educators, publishers,…

As 21st century librarians, we have made apt adjustments for reaching out into the digital world, but we need to consider the students who still use library services within our walls. We can use available handheld, mobile technologies to help patrons too shy to approach the desk and free library staff to bring reference service directly to patrons.

Like many teacher librarians, this author is often blessed with the opportunity to mentor preservice teacher librarians. There are "apps" she would like to "load" onto every student teacher-librarian's "screen," if he or she is to have true credibility in leading a school through an information and communication landscape that is continually in…

Most recently, Amazon crowed that it is selling more ebooks than hardcovers. Interestingly, the most recent figures from the Association of American Publishers indicate that new adult hardcover sales in both April and May rose by more than 40 percent over the same months last year, a rebound from last year's shopping paralysis brought on by the…

A library should be a free place where people can access and share information. Many school libraries have such strict access to Internet resources that patrons are blocked even from many educational sites. Restrictions do need to be in place to protect students from online predators and inappropriate content, but access needs to be carefully…

Two of the most time-consuming jobs in the library are taking inventory and keeping track of in-house uses of library material. Librarians have long been searching for more efficient solution for these two activities. New technology can be the answer to creating efficiency for libraries. In fact, if one is a SirsiDynix library, there is an easy…

In August 2010, "Wired" magazine declared, "The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet." Citing the rise of IPad & Smartphone sales and the rapid explosion of application-based software to run various programs on multiple computing devices--but especially mobile computing devices--people spend more hours than ever connected to or "on" the Internet…

Brandon School is a small pre-K through 8th grade school serving approximately 327 students. It does not have the funding that a lot of larger school districts have. When the special needs teacher approached the author a few years ago about high-interest, low-level books and asked for ideas to help her students read more, they came up with the…

Audiobooks have been around for years in various formats, like cassette tapes and CDs. This article describes a new type of audiobook on the market which is generating an interest in "reading." The device, called Playaway, is the size of a MP3 player and comes with a lanyard and ear buds. Buttons on the back of the player control the…

At the beginning of last year the assistant Middle Division director at the Berkeley Preparatory School challenged his faculty to collaborate with at least one teacher from another department in the division for a portion of one unit. Because the challenge was given at the beginning of the school year, it was received with trepidation, but, after…